International Teen Killers

Despite propaganda from American offender advocates to the contrary, the United States is not the only nation that gives long and serious, even life sentences to juveniles.

Some countries around the world do far worse – torture and enslave juveniles. Some sell them into sexual slavery. Some allow them to be raped and genitally mutilated. Some force them into sweat shops and other horrors. Some execute them – we do not anymore. The USA has an enlightened and effective juvenile justice system that works hard at rehabilitation. And Europe’s average incarceration of a routine juvenile crime is longer than those in the USA.

But the USA does have more teen killers than any other nation because of a number of factors, not the least of which is easy access to dangerous guns.

The mis-applied brain research often cited by offender advocates would seem to imply that the percentage of teen killers should be about the same everywhere, but it is not. It is definitely higher in the USA. Until our nation addresses that issue with the goal of fully understanding it and focusing on prevention, we will have to continue to provide serious prison sentences for serious offenders who endanger the public.

As we hear of teen killers outside the United States, we will post information here. Please contact us with other cases to post here.

Australia

Bid to name and shame brutal teen killers

Andrea Petrie

August 4, 2011 – 12:59PM

Family, friends and supporters of Marie Greening Zidan at the High Court in Canberra in 2004 to oppose an appeal by her killers. Two men who raped and killed a 73-year-old grandmother should be publicly named and shamed, the victim’s daughter says. “SJK” and “GAS” were 15 and 16 and had been chroming when they broke into Marie Greening Zidan’s Seaford home in 2000 and raped, bashed and strangled her while her disabled son lay terrified in another room. The Director of Public Prosecutions has applied to the Victorian Supreme Court for a suppression order on the names of the killers to be lifted.

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Victim: Marie Greening Zidan.

After their arrests, the killers tormented Mrs Zidan’s daughter, Janine Greening, with obscene telephone messages from a juvenile justice centre while they were awaiting sentence. Murder charges against the pair were dropped after the prosecution accepted guilty pleas to the charge of manslaughter. They were sentenced to six years’ jail with a minimum of four, which was increased to nine years with a minimum of six by the Court of Appeal. One of them was released in December 2006 and the other in August 2007. Under currents laws they can never be identified as Mrs Zidan’s killers without court permission, even if they offend — or kill — again. Prosecutor Daryl Brown, for the DPP, told Justice Bernard Bongiorno today: “It’s the public’s right to know their identity”. But lawyers for the pair strongly opposed the application, arguing that it would make a mockery of the principle of rehabilitation. SJK’s lawyer, Graham Thomas, SC, said naming and shaming the pair would also breach the United Nations Convention on Human Rights of which Australia was a signatory. Outside court Ms Greening said the brutal killers — who are now in their mid-20s and whom she said had re-offended since their release — should be named to protect the community. “The nature of the crimes wasn’t just pinching someone’s handbag, it was a horrific crime,” she said. “They sodomised my mother, raped her in different types of ways, stood on her, broke her ribs, strangled her and the courts owe it to my mother that we as a family can name who did what to my mother …”It is about public safety; no one can tell me they’re not going to do it again. They have reoffended, one of them has broken his parole twice and the second time he didn’t get put back in jail. The second was back in court recently for a (drug) trafficking offence, so where’s the rehabilitation? It’s not there, they have re-offended.” She said since her mother’s death, her family had not been able to live a normal life. “My family lives a nightmare every day,” she said. “When are we as victims going to get rights? When are we going to have our rights? We’ve been let down by the system but it’s not just us, it’s the whole of Victoria. Ms Greening’s daughter, Jasime Firth, added that lifting the suppression orders so the pair were named would mean they could not get employment in areas such as child care or in a womens’ facility. “It’s not just for us, it’s for future generations so it doesn’t happen again, “she said. “This is exactly what my mother is fighting for and this is what our family stands behind — all victims of crime.” Justice Bongiorno has reserved his decision.
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/bid-to-name-and-shame-brutal-teen-killers-20110804-1icrj.html#ixzz1U69G5lXt

Egypt

Teenage killer awaits ‘death or life’ in Saudi

Ahmed murdered three-year-old girl and seeks forgiveness by her family

An Egyptian boy who murdered a three-year-old girl nearly seven years ago and was sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia does not know whether he would get out of jail alive or in a coffin. But like any other human who would stick to life, Ahmed appears hopeful that he would be out some day not in a coffin. For he still hopes the victim’s family might pardon him – and if this happens, then the death verdict will be annulled and he would be back to life. In 2004, Ahmed was arrested by police in the eastern town of Dammam for stabbing the three-year-old Egyptian girl, Walaa, 30 times at her house as her mother waited for her on the roof to get a bottle of water. Ahmed, who lived next door, followed the child and murdered her but police had not mentioned motives for the crime. Ahmed was around 13 years when he committed the murder and is now nearing 20.

Canada

Ontario teen killer gets life in jail

Ontario teen Nick Bullock (right) has been sentenced him as an adult in the brutal murder of his 14-year-old cousin, Brayton Bullock (left). Nick was 16 at the time but is now 19. (Sun Media/Tracy McLaughlin, file)

Last February, a jury found Bullock guilty of the murder. While there was no real motive for the killing, the Crown posed the theory that Bullock was the “black sheep” in a large, extended family.

He once threatened to “kill all Bullocks” after a disagreement with his uncle. His uncles were upset with him for refusing to go to school or follow family rules.

But the family says they have trouble with the black sheep theory.

“He was loved,” said his uncle, Terry. “He chose to be a black sheep. He chose his path.”

Right from Grade 1 Bullock was in constant trouble, getting into fights and failing to show up for classes.

In court, the judge said he had grave concerns for the safety of the Bullock family if he were released from prison. He ordered no chance of parole for 10 years — the maximum available for a young offender.

“Nickolas Bullock planned to kill a Bullock, and selected Brayton as his victim,” the judge said. “He plunged the knife so severely into his head that it pierced his skull bone and entered his brain.”

While in custody, Bullock, who rarely went to school when he was in society, graduated from high school with an 80% average. A psychiatrist said he shows some of the traits of a psychopath, although he warned he could not give a complete diagnosis because Bullock’s lawyer directed his client not to discuss the murder with doctors because he intends to appeal the case.

Outside of court, Brayton’s mother and father clung to each other and wept. Family members, bleary-eyed with tears, hugged each other. Even the investigating officer and Crown attorney wept and hugged the parents.

“We are a broken and incomplete family,” said Brayton’s mother, Tammy. “No justice in the world will make us whole again.”

But she applauded the judge’s decision to sentence Bullock as an adult.

He will return to court Nov. 25 where it will be decided whether he can stay in a youth facility or be moved immediately to an adult penitentiary.

Peter Woodcock was only seventeen when he lured a seven-year-old boy into the deserted Toronto Exhibition Grounds, and raped and killed the child. He claims that killing made him feel like God. He then killed another little boy in Cherry Beach. His third victim was a four-year-old girl, whom he raped and strangled in a ravine. He claims to have attacked several more children. Police arrested Woodcock, a grade eleven student, in 1957. The courts declared him legally insane, and sent him to the psychiatric facility in Penetanguishene, Ontario. In 1982 he changed his name to David Michael Krueger. By 1991, Krueger seemed a model patient and received his first day pass. Within the hour, he had stabbed and hatcheted another inmate to death. Krueger remains under treatment in Penetanguishene.

“Well, all I had to do was hold her head under water,” Sandra said. “She was in a bathtub filled with water. It’s not hard. It’s a lot easier to kill a person than you think. I don’t know how easy it is to get away with it. But I planned it pretty well. And like there’s all this stuff you have to remember. Like when you’re giving your statement to the cops or whatever. You have to remember, like, you know things that people do when they’re lying. Like, start off with something big, and then get more and more into details. Like, that’s obviously a major sign that you’re lying.”

The Class Project is a story so evil it is difficult to accept that it is real. That two teenage girls could deliberately murder their mother, with the full knowledge of friends, sounds like a work of fiction, not reality. Because The Class Project is a true story, it becomes more fascinating than a comparable work of fiction. There is so much horror and brutality in the world that we often pay little attention to “just another murder.” But this murder was so unusual and incomprehensible; it captured the attention of Canadians.

The names of the killers (Sandra and Beth in the book) were changed, as was that of their family members and close friends, to protect the girls’ identities. Apart from their names, those of all others mentioned are real. Had Sandra and Beth been adults their names might have become as infamous as that of Paul Bernardo. A few facts have also been changed to keep the girls’ names secret, but, in essence, The Class Project is a true story.

Sandra and Beth lived in Brampton, ON, with their mother Linda, an alcoholic, and younger brother Bobby. Linda’s behaviour was a constant embarrassment to the girls, so much so that in January 2003, after Linda had taken a number of Tylenol-3s and become drunk, the girls put her in the bathtub and drowned her. The murder had been well-planned in advance and known by three of their closest friends. The killing remained a secret for a year until Sandra began talking about what they had done.

In the Foreword, it states that ‘prior to killing their mom, the eldest girl told just about everyone in their social group that she and her younger sister were plotting the crime.” This is quite misleading because, apart from the two sisters, only three of their friends knew about the intended murder. The girls’ “social group” or “class” was, therefore, very small, and the book’s title an exaggeration. While the story of the killing is horrific, the many details about the daily life of the family (drunken mother, two self centered girls and a young brother who is rarely mentioned) are boring. How exciting can numerous tales of a drunken mother be? What is interesting about two pot smoking girls fantasizing about how good the future would be without their mother? Their life experiences were so ordinary and dull that reading about them is not pleasant and certainly not exciting. While teenagers might be intrigued by the story, they are likely to become bored long before they finish the book.

ENGLAND/UK

British man convicted in 1993 murder of 2-year-old released from prison

ED NOTE – NOVJL IS VERY CONCERNED ABOUT THE RECIDIVISM IN THIS CASE AND OTHERS LIKE IT

One of two men who were convicted in the grisly murder of a 2-year-old British boy in 1993 has been released from prison for a second time.

Jon Venables was 10 years old when he and Robert Thompson were found guilty of abducting Bulger from a shopping center, beating him to death with bricks and stones, and then leaving his mutilated body on railroad tracks in Liverpool.

Venables served an eight-year-prison term and was released in 2001. Now 31, Venables is being let out of prison again after pleading guilty to downloading and distributing child pornography in 2010.

He has been given a second new identity at a cost of $428,000, Sky News reports.

A friend, who was not named, said Bulger’s father, Ralph, fears that Venables will commit more crime.

She told Sky News that Bulger’s family was given little information about Venables’ release.

Holly Robinson, 16, (left) and her sister Ashleigh, 19, (right) have been sentenced to a total of 40 years for the brutal knife murder of their 61-year-old father Antoni

Mr Robinson was stabbed 15 times with a kitchen knife and a seven-inch commando-style army knife by one of the girls’ boyfriends as he slept in his bed.

In the horrific attack, the jugular veins on both sides of his neck were slashed, causing him to bleed to death within minutes.

Sentencing the girls, Judge Griffith Williams condemned them as ‘Judas-like’. He said: ‘It is to be hoped that in his dying moments he was at least spared the awful realisation that it was his own two daughters who were party to his murder.

‘Two daughters who had appealed for his kindness. Two daughters who, Judas-like, wormed their way back into his affections. Not one of you has shown the slightest trace of remorse.’

Mold Crown Court, in North Wales, heard that Mr Robinson had split from the girls’ mother, Joanne Barr, after 25 years and there had been a series of rows.

The sisters believed that some of their mother’s jewellery, which was only of sentimental value, was in a safe in their father’s bedroom.

Acrimonious split: Murdered Antoni Robinson had split with the girls’ mother Joanne Barr (pictured here in a police mugshot) shortly before he was stabbed. They had lived together for over 25 years

Captured: These police mugshots show Holly Robinson (left) and Ashleigh Robinson on the night of their arrest on suspicion of murdering their father, 61-year-old retired antiques dealer Antoni Robinson. They have now been sentenced, along with their boyfriends and mother, for their part in the killing

The court was told that they ‘encouraged’ their boyfriends, Gordon Harding, 20, and Sacha Roberts, 19, to help in a bid to retrieve it.

In fact, the safe only contained £900 in cash, the judge said.

Harding and Ashleigh Robinson and their newborn baby had been living with the victim at his three-bedroom bungalow in Colwyn Bay. After he had fallen asleep one night in July last year, they let Roberts and Hollie Robinson into the home.

Andrew Thomas QC, prosecuting, said: ‘Gordon Harding entered the bedroom, either alone or with others. A violent incident followed, in which Tony Robinson was repeatedly stabbed and cut.’

Harding admitted stabbing Mr Robinson, but claimed he was acting in self-defence and had himself been attacked with a kitchen knife.

Incarceration: Gordon Harding, 20, (left) was sentenced to 22 years for his part in the murder. Sacha Roberts, 19, (right) received 20 years

But Mr Thomas said: ‘It appears that Mr Robinson had not been able to fight back or to escape. Mr Robinson must have been completely overpowered by his attacker or attackers. Another significant feature is that the objects around the bed were not disturbed.’

Mr Thomas said all four were guilty of murder because they had supported and encouraged Harding who had gone into the bedroom.

After the conviction of the four for murder, following a month-long trial, Judge Williams lifted an order protecting the identity of 16-year-old Hollie.

Harding and his girlfriend, Ashleigh, were sentenced to a minimum of 22 years, Roberts to 20 years and Hollie Robinson was told she would be detained for a minimum of 18 years.

Barr was jailed for four years for lying to police after the killing.

After the case, Claire and Amanda Robinson, Mr Robinson’s two daughters from his first marriage, said: ‘This can only be described as a devious, greedy plot made more horrific by the fact it was perpetrated by relatives we thought we knew.’

Scotland

Jodi’s killer has appeal thrown out

Published on 3 Feb 2011

BRIAN HORNE

A TOP judge who wanted to show mercy to schoolboy killer Luke Mitchell was outvoted by other appeal judges yesterday

Lord Gill – the Lord Justice Clerk and No 2 in the hierarchy of Scottish judges – said Mitchell should serve a minimum of only 15 years of his life sentence for murdering and mutilating girlfriend Jodi Jones in woods near Dalkeith, Midlothian. However, Lord Hardie and Lady Cosgrove decided that the 20-year minimum imposed at the end of cannabis-smoking Mitchell’s high-profile trial should remain. It had been widely thought that Mitchell would benefit from a previous ruling where teenage sex killer Kenneth Fraser had his minimum sentence cut on the grounds of his age at the time. But Mitchell, 22, remained impassive as his hopes were dashed during a brief hearing at the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh. Jodi’s mother Judith and other members of her family also showed no emotion. Judges had been agonising about what to do with him for nine months since defence QC Gordon Jackson argued that Mitchell had been a child at the time of the murder. “The question is whether a civilised society should give children sentences like that,” said the lawyer, arguing that the 20-year ban on applying for parole, imposed when trial judge Lord Nimmo Smith imposed a life sentence, was too harsh. However, appeal judges noted that Mitchell’s appeal focused almost entirely on the question of his age.

Lord Gill said: “There is no doubt that the appellant is an unsympathetic character. There is also no doubt as to the strength of public outrage in Dalkeith and beyond. “But it is important to bear in mind that the appellant was a first offender who was just under 15 years old at the time of the offence.” He added: “I have the utmost sympathy for the family of the victim and I understand entirely why this murder should have caused public revulsion.” But, he concluded, the minimum sentence should be cut to 15 years. Lord Hardie, calling for Mitchell’s appeal to be thrown out, said: “This was a sustained, prolonged and brutal attack upon an innocent young girl.”

And Lady Cosgrove argued: “The murder involved the repeated use of a knife and a sustained and brutal attack on a trusting and defenceless 14-year-old girl who suffered a horrible death and whose body was thereafter extensively mutilated.” She said the sentence would have been longer, except for Mitchell’s youth.

Jodi’s naked, bound and mutilated body was found in June 2003 in woods beside a path that joined her house in the Easthouses area of Dalkeith with Mitchell’s home in Newbattle. After months of suspicion Mitchell – also 14 at the time of the murder – was charged and eventually brought to trial at the High Court in Edinburgh the following November. Mitchell’s conviction followed one of the most unusual and dramatic trials ever seen in Scotland.

In a specially constructed court room, a section of the wall which bounded the crime scene was built by theatre set designers to demonstrate key evidence in the prosecution case. Jodi, arms tied with her own trousers, had suffered terrible injuries – before and after the frenzied knife attack which killed her. Trial judge Lord Nimmo Smith said pictures of the girl’s injuries were the worst he had ever seen. There were also rumours that a juror suffered a panic attack after seeing police pictures of the naked body in the woods.

Although Mitchell’s attempt to overturn his conviction was thrown out by appeal judges in May 2008, he is attempting to have the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, which investigates possible miscarriages of justice, to re-open the case. Mitchell’s defiant mother, Corinne, left court yesterday saying only: “The fight goes on.”

But, after the rulings, Mitchell must wait until 2023 before he can ask to be freed – and there is no guarantee the parole board will release him then.

Two Langford teens were arrested Friday and later charged in the murder of Kimberly Proctor

Two youths who brutally raped and murdered 18-year-old Kimberly Proctor are at a high risk to re-offend violently and sexually for up to 40 years, a sentencing hearing in B.C. Supreme Court heard Tuesday.

Court-ordered psychiatric and psychological reports on the teens — who were 16 and 17 at the time of the murder last March, and who are now 17 and 18 — show there is little chance they can be rehabilitated, said prosecutor Peter Juk. He urged Justice Robert Johnston to impose adult sentences to protect the public.

Defence lawyers Robert Jones, who is representing the 17-year-old, and Steven Kelliher, who is representing the 18-year-old, did not oppose the Crown’s application for an adult sentence.

Johnston will deliver his decision Monday.

In October, the two teens pleaded guilty to the first-degree murder of Proctor, whose badly burned body was found under a bridge on the Galloping Goose Trail on March 19, 2010. After the guilty pleas, Juk read a five-page agreed statement of facts, signed by Crown and defence lawyers, that set out the gruesome facts of how the teens lured the Grade 12 student to one of their homes, tied her up, gagged her, sexually assaulted her, beat her, suffocated her and mutilated her body with a knife over several hours.

The Youth Criminal Justice Act prohibits publishing the names of the two teens because of their ages at the time of the killing.

On Tuesday, court heard psychiatric and psychological reports that concluded the younger teen was mature, intellectually bright and curious, but grew up with financial stress and divorce. He had limited contact with his father and felt disdain and contempt for his mother, whom he hit on two occasions. He has a superior attitude and struggled to get along with peers. He is addicted to cannabis.

In an interview, the 17-year-old told psychiatrist Dr. Kulwant Riar that he wanted to experience the act of killing. Riar diagnosed him as a deviant sexual sadist — a tendency to derive sexual gratification from inflicting pain — with very strong psychopathic traits and strong indicators for necrophilia, an erotic attraction to corpses.

Riar described the youth as cooperative and polite, charming, glib, grandiose, superficial and suspicious, but he displayed very shallow emotions, said prosecutor Tamara Hodge who summarized the eight court-ordered reports.

Riar recommended the youth be followed closely until he is in his 40s, and said he is at very high risk to re-offend for the next 25 to 30 years.

According to a report by psychologist Jim Hemphill, the youth started to control his emotions, including anxiety, anger and fear, from the age of 13. By age 15, he was able to completely shut down his emotions. The teen showed an extreme degree of narcissism, no remorse and a complete disregard for his victim.

“I found him extremely callous,” Hemphill wrote in his report.

More telling, Hemphill found the younger teen was aroused by the physical and psychological suffering of others, had rape fantasies and was interested in bondage and sexual asphyxia.

In his report on the case, juvenile forensic psychiatrist Dr. Roy O’Shaughnessy said the youth has an extreme form of psychopathy. He found it significant that murdering Proctor was part of the original plan — the youths didn’t kill her to cover up a crime, instead, her death was part of their sexual fantasy.

O’Shaughnessy believed the younger boy’s risk to re-offend might be reduced after age 50, but rehabilitation is unrealistic.

“Unfortunately, we do not have any treatment to deal with the degree of psychopathy. We can treat his arousal with medication, but we can’t deter a person from doing this in future,” O’Shaughnessy reported.

It is extremely rare for youths to commit sexual murder, he noted.

The prognosis for the 18-year-old is a little more uncertain because after his arrest, he tried to minimize his involvement in the crime, and he lied to the psychologist and psychiatrist who interviewed him, Juk said.

Court heard the 18-year-old was a destructive child, always difficult to discipline, oppositional and rebellious his whole life. In February 2006, he was arrested for threatening his mother with a knife. He began setting fires at age 13. He kicked the family dog and broke its paw.

Asked why he went along with the 17-year-old’s plan to rape and murder Proctor, the older teen told investigators he thought it was hypothetical and in jest. He also said he didn’t want to piss off the younger teen, whom he described as “f—ing nuts.”

He claimed remorse, but his probation officer found no indication from his physical appearance or tone of voice that he had any sincere remorse.

O’Shaughnessy found the teen had a conduct disorder that began in childhood. Conduct disorder involves chronic defiant, anti-social behaviour such as bullying or fighting and cruel and aggressive behaviour toward people. Though O’Shaughnessy

didn’t diagnose the youth as a sexual sadist, he found he has a tendency toward sexual deviancy and the risk and thrill that go along with it, which put him at high risk to re-offend.

O’Shaughnessy also found the older boy had no remorse and was aggressive, threatening and intimidating.

Generally speaking, people with these diagnosis are at very high risk to re-offend with a sexually motivated homicide, O’Shaughnessy noted. He recommended the 18-year-old be monitored closely upon his release and “likely for the rest of his life.”

Juk reminded the court that three days before Proctor was murdered, the older teen had searched the Internet for information on the inside parts of a woman’s body and bone fractures. He chatted online with his friend that it would be “exhilarating” to carry out the offence. In one online chat, he said he couldn’t wait to do it.

Juk urged Johnston to lift the publication ban on the identities of the youths.

“They should be known for what they have done. There’s no evidence it will harm them unduly. It might also help them understand their responsibility.”

Best Book To Help Murder Victims Family Members

Adult Time for Adult Crimes

“Brain Overclaim Syndrome” by Professor Stephen J. Morse of UPenn Law

Victims Families at the Supreme Court

Harvard Professor James Q. Wilson “Thinking About Crime”:

". . . some persons will shun crime even if we do nothing to deter them, while others will seek it out even if we do everything to reform them. Wicked people exist. Nothing avails except to set them apart from innocent people. And many people, neither wicked nor innocent, but watchful, dissembling, and calculating of their opportunities, ponder our reaction to wickedness as a cue to what they might profitably do. We have trifled with the wicked, made sport of the innocent, and encouraged the calculators. Justice suffers, and so do we all."